When I look in the mirror there is an old man staring at me. Grey hair and wrinkles, rheumy eyes, a slight frown offers proof the poor disillusioned soul wasted most of the time the universe had given him. Whoever he is he has squandered most of his yesterdays, and his tomorrows aren’t looking good, either. I would feel sorry for him, but he seems happy.
At my last doctor’s appointment, he asked me if I had a living will, handing me a booklet about the end of life, my life. I glanced at the pages, thinking “I’m not ready to die.” I was more than a little shocked that we were talking about this. When I looked up, he was staring at me, he seemed a little sad, uncomfortable.
“If your heart stops, do you want us to do everything in our power to start it again?”
Wow!
“I guess so.” What do you say? I couldn’t imagine my heart stopping. I couldn’t imagine dying. I felt like crying but didn’t want to embarrass myself. I would look like a doddering old fool.
He started telling me how extreme the measures might be.
“It’s not like television.” He said, and started talking about the steps they would take, broken ribs, a long, durable needle stuck into the heart. Electric burns from a defibrillator and pulled muscles from the violent contractions it would cause. He talked about how long the brain could survive without the oxygen rich blood my poor frail heart provided.[1] The details were so awful I started to shut down. I started to look forward to dying.[2]
“Do I have to answer now?” I asked, mostly to stop the morbid explanation.
“No, no. Read the book. Talk to your wife.” He said, and we scheduled my next appointment, and we parted as friends, sort of.
It was an epiphany. How do you measure the value of days you might not have?
That thought was a lot bigger than I wanted to deal with. I started to think about the world shrinking around me. My life was getting smaller. I had to take steps to course correct and focus on steps to improve my quality of life. A negative arithmetic progression where the number gets smaller until it reaches zero. Damn, I‘m screwed.
How do you make your days better? Skydiving? No, not only no, but hell no, I love getting out of airplanes, but they have to be on the ground. I’d prefer getting off before they fly, but since they would make me buy a ticket it would be an expensive act of cowardice and probably anger the other passengers and flight crew. I shudder to think what the jackals of TSA would do to me. Waiting until it takes off, flies and is back on terra firma again is the only choice we have. Unless you want to jump out, mid-flight.
Rock climbing? I can barely get up and down off a ladder to clean the gutters. At my age the specter of a broken hip follows me up, rung after rung, gently nudging the rickety legs of the aging stepladder. Each step creaks and groans with the added weight, or maybe it’s me.
Skiing, down hill or water? No thanks. I have an unnatural fear of water, or at least all the things that live, die, and kill in the water. Aquatic life is the ultimate survival of the fittest, eat or be eaten. There is no remorse under the surface. I guess the fear isn’t so unnatural, after all. Alpine skiing requires skill, athleticism and grace. None of which was I born with, if they are genetic. If these things don’t come from the parents, passed at birth to the unwilling child then and a person needed to acquire them through effort and toil, count me out. Exertion and struggle were as alien to me as talent and skill.
All this leaves me wondering how to enjoy the last of my time on earth. I never really thought about it, it snuck up on me, an ambush. One day I was young, carefree, the future stretched into eternity. Now, I’m making a living well and deciding on resuscitation.
And I still don’t know what to do about the content of the days remaining.
So, I’ll do my best to have a little fun, do a little good, and enjoy my life. Looking back, I should have done something more, led a better life. In the words of Willie Nelson:
“I can see the things I’d change
If I went back in time somehow
But there’s nothing I can do about it now.”[3]
Life is too short to worry about tomorrow, or yesterday, I’ll answer my doctor’s questions, and fill out his forms but I’m not going to change, too much.
[1] I will spare you the more lurid details, mostly because I had begun to swoon and don’t remember everything.
[2] Not really.
[3] Nothing I Can do About it Now.
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Previously Published on Life, Explained and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
